My family is a tale of many – from Irish to Scots, to Germans to Chinese. I truly am MULTICULTURAL!

One side have a long history with Cleveland / Redland Bay just east of Brisbane.

In the early 1990’s by uncle decided to do a family history (took 5 years!) and it resulted in the ‘clan’ being brought together bayside. Hundreds of them came from world-wide! My grandmother, on mum’s side, was the oldest living Collins at the time and proudly let everyone know! I can remember her having a knees up party – that was only a year before her death in 1997.

Recently, I’ve been spending a fair bit of time around there – and thought, a good little trip on a bike would be to the Redlands Museum. Avalon Road is a nice little twisty just for the sake of taking a run to blow away the cobwebs!

One, I love seeing our history, two, I love being part of it – even better when I run into an old Ulyssian of 1984/5 who volunteers her time to play with the machinery at the museum!

For some odd reason, she came over and asked me if I wanted to see a few things ‘working’ rather than the normal static displays – then we got talking about the Mr Mutt’s, Keith Cox, Animal, Frog, etc….. It was truly walking back in history.

I further got to see some of the things they’ve found about my family – the Collins Family – and their stake in the local history.

Time motored on and I’d gone nowhere – short bike ride and a long time talking bikes, history and people I’d not seen forever! I then spent the rest of the day discovering some parts of the Bay that I rarely bothered to view over the years. It’s amazing how one’s ideas and passions develop over time.